It is awful being 16. There can be few periods of life when so many people feel quite so compelled to tell you what you should do. And when one-size-fits-all solutions are offered to utterly disparate people.

Tony Little, the retiring head of Eton College, has added to the noise with the list of recommended reading (subscription) for “every bright 16-year-old” which features in his new book. Though not all bright 16-year-olds have similar tastes. Would it be a sign that they weren’t truly bright if they read the first 10 pages of Gulliver’s Travels (which heads Little’s list) and then gave up to read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy instead? I’m pretty sure that’s what I would have done, and I don’t think it was a damning indictment of my reading future.

Of the seven novels written in English that Little recommends, only two are from this century (Atonement and Never Let Me Go). While he may have enjoyed Bonfire of the Vanities, it’s hard to imagine why he would consider it required reading for a teenager now. Especially given that many of the pupils he has taught will end up in the banking world. Perhaps he’s hoping to put them off.

Pupils at Eton making their way to class. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Getty Images

The list is wide-ranging in subjects – with books on art, economics, history and mathematics included – but not in its voices. Both economics recommendations are by JK Galbraith, and the most recent was published in 1978. It’s not my field, but I can’t help wondering if there might have been some developments in economic theory at some point in the past 37 years.

And only 10% of Little’s book recommendations are by women, which is a pity. If you are responsible for children in a single-sex school, wouldn’t it be wise to ensure they receive some input from the other sex? Where is Margaret Atwood, Ali Smith or Zadie Smith? Mary Beard makes the cut, but where is Edith Hall, who writes just as brilliantly about the Greeks as Beard does about the Romans?

Non-white authors aren’t well represented either. Alain Mabanckou’s Memoirs of a Porcupine would bristle nicely beside Little’s French-language pick (The Elegance of the Hedgehog). And Little’s Spanish and Portuguese choices are both European, which seems like a missed opportunity when so much good fiction has been written in South America.

This list for bright teenagers may be intellectually demanding but it doesn’t take them very far from Eton. Perhaps Little will have time for some broader reading himself when he has retired.